


Please don't tell me (how this story ends)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Character Study, Episode: s04e19 Ku I Ka Pili Koko (Blood Brothers), Episode: s07e10 Ka Luhi (The Burden), F/M, M/M, POV Melissa Armstrong | Amber Vitale, Some angst, also melissa/getting a chance at a partner that actually pays attention to her, steve/danny is endgame here!, this is not altogether as depressing as these tags make it sound, two episodes are referenced very directly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Hey, babe!”Melissa looks up, but so does Steve, next to her. Danny is hopping up the steps from the grass to the lanai, and comes to stand at Steve’s other side.“What’s up?” Steve asks, seemingly unaware that Melissa responded to Danny’s call too.Or: Five times Melissa suspects her relationship is doomed (and the one time she knows for sure).





	Please don't tell me (how this story ends)

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love Danny, I really do, but he’s often a _terrible_ boyfriend. Part (or even most) of that is due to the way the show deals with romantic relationships for our leads – or doesn’t deal with it, to be more accurate, because their girlfriends keep disappearing into this Girlfriend Black Hole until it’s convenient for them to pop up again once a season – but that still has some distressing implications for how these women get treated. I’m very tired of that, so this happened. This is essentially a very long breakup fic, because I want canon to do it right and they probably won't.
> 
> By the way, it occurs to me that with this fic, I’m posting two stories from the POV of canon love interests for Danny in a row (though this has been in the works much longer than the Rachel fic, which was 80% a spontaneous word vomit moment). That’s unplanned, but I’ve decided I’m rolling with it. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be rounding the trilogy out with a Gabby fic, because I have no clue what I would be writing there. 
> 
> The title is from a song by the same name by Luka Bloom.

**1.**

The very first time Melissa – still officially Amber then – meets Steve, she’s a little scared. Not because he’s intimidating or unfriendly, but because Danny talks about him a lot and he’s obviously an important person in her brand new boyfriend’s life. She wants to make a good impression, so it’s perhaps not ideal when Danny finally introduces her to Steve McGarrett while he and Steve are both still covered in white dust, and Danny is holding a hand to his side because of bruising from the building that collapsed on him and that he was trapped under until ten minutes ago. It’s all a little more high stakes emotionally than she expected.

“Nice to finally meet you,” Steve says, his voice a tad raspy. Not that she can blame him for that after what he just went through. He holds out an arm and for a moment she thinks he’s going to shake her hand, but then Danny’s daughter, Grace, falls into Steve and clings to him. 

“You too,” Melissa says, overwhelmed but determined to try, but Steve doesn’t have eyes for her. He bends down to kiss the top of Grace’s head.

The measure of familiarity and love there is striking to Melissa, in that moment. It’s very sweet, if a little unexpected. But then so is everything about this day, from waking up in Danny’s bed to meeting his daughter to hearing he was still in the building when a bomb went off.

Grace steps back, and before Melissa gets a chance to say anything else – what, she’s not sure, but she thinks she should do something, say something to show Danny she’ll get along with both Steve and Grace, two of the most important people in Danny’s life – Danny speaks up. “Guys, give me one second with Steve, alright?”

So Melissa has a way to be helpful, and it’s by leading Grace away while Danny talks to Steve. She keeps an eye on them from a distance while one of Danny’s other colleagues, Kono Kalakaua, talks to Grace and makes her laugh about something.

Melissa knows that her relationship with Danny is still in its very early stages. As a consequence, she doesn’t have a perfect grasp on how to read him, yet, despite how openly he at first appears to telegraph all his feelings. Steve, she doesn’t know at all, except from what Danny has told her.

The thing is that she doesn’t have to, looking at them now. They hug, and even from a distance and while feeling very shaken about the day’s events, she is very sure that their relationship, at least, is way past anything that could be described as early stages.

*

**2.**

After that first meeting, she doesn’t see Steve as often as the amount of time Danny spends talking about him would perhaps have suggested. She assumes for a while that it’s because Danny and Steve don’t actually spend a lot of time together outside of work, but the longer she’s together with him, the more obvious it becomes that that’s not true. It seems that he’s just keeping his friends and his girlfriend fairly separate.

All of this means that she fairly jumps at the chance to get to know Danny’s ohana better when his birthday rolls around. She suggests throwing a party – she would try to surprise him, but it’s difficult, because she doesn’t have contact info for a lot of people that should definitely attend and doesn’t want to be forced to ask Steve or Kono – but Danny says there’s already an informal something planned at Steve’s house, because he apparently has a much nicer place with a grill and a private beach. Melissa pushes her confusion about only hearing about this now aside, and when the day arrives, she does everything she can to come across as someone Danny’s friends might like to keep around.

Mostly, it works, and she even enjoys herself. She laughs with Kono, listens politely to Chin and Max’s conversation about how fighting a Vulcan would be different from fighting a human, and receives a compliment from Grace on her dress. That last one leaves her feeling particularly warm inside, because Grace’s opinion matters more to Danny than practically anything in the world, and after their accidental first meeting while she was wearing Danny’s shirt, she’s relieved that Grace doesn’t seem to be holding that against her.

There’s just one person left that she hasn’t seen a lot of, and that’s Steve. He’s been at the grill for most of the evening, so she fetches two beers and offers him one, coming to stand next to him.

“Oh, hey,” he says, accepting the drink and tipping the neck of his bottle to hers with a smile, “thanks.”

She takes a sip of her own beer and watches as he uses a fork to turn over some onion slices. He seems like the type not to mind silence, which is a little funny for Danny’s best friend. Eventually, she decides to go with a cliché as a conversation starter, because it’s a cliché for a reason.

“You have a really beautiful place here.”

“Thanks,” he says, a little wry for reasons she doesn’t understand. “Again. It’s the house I grew up in, actually. It used to be my dad’s.”

“He’s not around anymore?”

He gives her another smile, but this one is tight, only there for politeness’ sake. “He was murdered a few years ago.”

“Oh god.” She claps a hand over her mouth and then immediately feels very silly about it, on top of feeling stupid for even asking in the first place. What did she expect him to say, really? She drops her hand, folds all her fingers around her clammy beer bottle like it might help keep this conversation afloat, and hopes she isn’t turning red. “Wow, I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”

“Hey, it’s alright. You couldn’t have known.” He turns back to the grill, flipping some more onions. “My dad’s murder is how Danny and I met, in fact. He was the detective assigned to the case.”

“I didn’t know that either,” she says truthfully. Danny had never told her this story. “So you hit it off during the investigation, and then you brought him onto the taskforce?”

Steve shoots her a highly amused glance that again, she’s not sure how to interpret. She constantly feels like she’s missing vital pieces of context while talking to him. “Something like that. There was some hitting involved, for sure.”

It’s a weird way to phrase it. She’s still puzzling over that and how to respond without sticking her foot in it again, when Danny’s voice calls out.

“Hey, babe!”

She looks up, but so does Steve, next to her. Danny is hopping up the steps from the grass to the lanai, and comes to stand at Steve’s other side. 

“What’s up?” Steve asks, seemingly unaware that Melissa responded to Danny’s call too.

Far more confusing, though – and a little embarrassing – is that Danny doesn’t spare her more than a quick, distracted smile. She watches him tell Steve something and then hit Steve’s bicep with the back of his hand, laughing, which Steve responds to with a wicked grin. She clutches her beer bottle and has to wonder if she’s right to feel a little concerned.

*

**3.**

Melissa loves lazy Sunday mornings. Sleeping in always feels like a luxury, and it’s better still when there’s another warm body next to her in the bed, which she can cuddle up to and eventually start trading sleepy kisses with. Danny loves it, too, she knows. He’s too much of a man to admit out loud that he’s really into this kind of innocent affection, but he’s never tried to hide that he’s a tactile creature.

Not that it always stays that innocent, of course. This particular morning, she is considering just how tangled up in the sheets she would get if she tried to climb on top of him, when a phone starts ringing. Hers is on silent, so she withdraws her hands from his face and chest, knowing he’ll want to at least check who it is. He’s a cop and a dad; they’re a combination that mean he’s never truly off-duty.

With a groan, he rolls over, away from her, and fishes around on the nightstand with an outstretched hand until he comes up with his phone. She can see _Steve McGarrett_ flashing on the screen. It’s unexpectedly funny to her that Danny would have Steve programmed into his contacts with his full name, like there could feasibly be any other Steve his mind would go to first.

He sits up in the bed. “I have to take this. It could be work.”

She nods, but it doesn’t mean much, because Danny has already accepted the call and is pressing the phone to his ear. “Steve,” he says, no greeting. His voice is still a little rumbly from sleep, the way she wishes only she would get to hear. “What’s up?”

She can hear the faintly metallic-tinged bass of Steve’s voice over the phone, but can’t make out his words, so she has to content herself with listening to Danny’s side of the conversation. It’s obvious after his second or third sentence that there’s no way this call is work-related. He sounds exasperated and amused, which he more or less always does with Steve, but the words he’s saying are about a boat and some disastrous fishing trip they seem to have had in the past.

“Hey, honey,” Danny says, just when she starts tuning him out completely.

She looks up, raising her head from the pillow, despite the little, resentful voice in the back of her head that says that she can’t know he’s not addressing Steve. She takes pleasure in silencing the voice when Danny is most definitely focused on her this time. He’s sitting up against the headboard, holding the phone away from his face.

What she likes a lot less, is the apologetic face he pulls at her. “I know we were going to do a lazy day in, but one of Steve’s old Navy buddies is in town with his sailboat and he wants to take us fishing.”

“Can’t you do that next weekend?” she asks, even though she’s already pretty sure about the answer.

“He’s only here for a couple of days. Steve and I have to work tomorrow.”

So do I, she wants to say. She doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to be that nagging girlfriend that keeps Danny away from his friends. “Okay, fine.” Despite her strong annoyance, she has to laugh a little at the excited look that crosses his face. “I hereby release you from boyfriend duties for the day. You can go.”

“Did I ever tell you that you’re the best?” he asks, and sends her a wink while he raises the phone to his ear again. “Steve, did you hear that?”

After he says his goodbyes to Steve, he gets up and starts getting dressed. She remains on the bed as she watches him button up his shirt and slip on his shoes. He’s almost out the door of the bedroom when he turns back. That mean voice in the back of her head wonders if he only now remembered that she’s still there.

“Want to come with?” he asks.

She doesn’t laugh, but she kind of wants to. It’s just so ridiculous. “No, thanks.”

“Alright.” He smiles, and she smiles back, because that smile reminds her that he can be incredibly sweet sometimes. He comes back to her to lean over the bed and press a kiss to her lips. She chases him a little when he draws back, leaning up with him, but he doesn’t let that sway him in the slightest. “I’ll be back before dinner, probably. I’ll text you,” he says, and then he’s really out the door.

She lays staring up at the ceiling for a good long while, allowing herself, for the first time, to admit that she is a little jealous.

*

**4.**

Danny, for all his faults, does know how to cook. She appreciates that in a man, and she’s even more appreciative of it when she enters his house on a Saturday evening and she’s led to the kitchen by the smell of something really good. Danny is at the stove when she greets him, so she gives him a quick kiss and then hugs him from behind, peering over his shoulder while he alternately stirs a pan with sauce and one with pasta.

She breathes in deeply. “God, that smells heavenly.”

He gives her clasped hands on his belly a friendly pat, and she can see him smile from the side. “Nothing less than that for my favorite woman.”

“I’m glad to hear I still rate that high,” she jokes. Mostly jokes. “I haven’t seen you since what, Monday?”

“It’s been five long days,” he agrees, but looking at him, he doesn’t really give off that impression. Maybe it’s selfish of her to want to see something in his face or body language that shows that he’s been feeling bad without her, but whatever she was hoping for, it’s not there. He looks relaxed and happy, perhaps more so than most times.

“What have you been up to?” she asks, trying to shake her bitterness. Is it a bad thing to want to be missed?

“Well, my sister went home yesterday, so I had one last dinner with her before I dropped her off at the airport.”

She feels a frisson of fear run down her spine, but she smiles through it. “Your sister was here?”

“Oh.” He stops stirring and turns his head a bit so he can see her profile. He looks genuinely surprised at her surprise. “Yeah, shit, didn’t I tell you? She was in town for a work thing, so we met up a couple of times. It wasn’t anything big.”

“Right,” she says, and she knows her smile will look very forced by now, so she gives up and drops it. He’s back to stirring the food and doesn’t seem to notice. “Did you have fun?”

“Sure, yeah. She embarrassed me in front of Steve within a minute of us welcoming her to the island, but you know, she’s my little sister, so I kind of have to love her.” She can feel his chuckle rumble through his chest. It would be nice, under different circumstances.

“Steve met her?” she asks. The answer is obvious, but somehow she still hopes to hear him say there was some kind of misunderstanding. 

“Yeah, but very briefly. He got called away – work, you know how it is – so he couldn’t join us for brunch like he was supposed to.” He shrugs, like hey, what are you gonna do?

What indeed. She shrugs too, or maybe she just moves her shoulders in an effort to shake off the sense that she’s constantly playing second fiddle to her boyfriend’s best friend. It doesn’t really work, even when she changes the subject and they end up having a legitimately nice evening, with some really good pasta.

*

**5.**

Five-0 has a lot of group events. Melissa knows this, even if it’s not from personal experience, exactly. She can never figure out why – as far as she’s aware, anyone who is even remotely considered ohana has a standing invitation, but Danny still brings her along only occasionally. It has reached a point where she doesn’t really want to ask about it.

It’s not like the times she does get invited are moments she looks forward too, anyway. One of these gatherings is in Steve’s backyard, just like Danny’s birthday party, two whole years ago by now. The sun is sinking low over the horizon, there is an assortment of folding and dining room chairs spread in a loose circle on the grass, and Steve is wearing an apron, grilling admittedly very good food for everyone. Danny is sitting next to her – or at least, he’s supposed to be. He’s been there maybe ten minutes out of the two endless hours this barbecue has taken so far.

“Hey,” Kono says, when she takes Danny’s place. “You look a little gloomy, so you should definitely have some potato salad.”

“Why potato salad?” It sounds like a private joke, but the hard truth is that Melissa doesn’t know these people that Danny calls family on more than the most superficial level. There’s no room for jokes that only the two of them would understand, not even with Kono, the only other woman at many of these things. Kono tries, though, and for that Melissa is thankful. At least someone still does. 

Kono grins at her. “Because I made it, so I know it’s awesome.”

“Well,” she says, smiling back even though she hates things with a lot of mayonnaise in them, “then clearly I’ll have to try it.”

It’s a good moment, but it’s also pretty short. Their conversation continues despite the fact that they’re at best acquaintances – they’re both good enough at small talk to make it work – but before long, Kono gets called away by Lou Grover, because as opposed to Melissa, Kono does actually know all these people and has a connection with them outside of knowing Danny. Melissa stays where she is and considers eating some potato salad, just because Kono was nice to her.

She wonders, a few times, if she should go over to Danny and Steve, who seem to plan on grilling for eternity. Maybe forcibly putting herself between them would remind Danny that she’s there – that he brought her there – but deep down, she knows it’s just wishful thinking. She knows Danny and the dynamic duo that is Danny-and-Steve well enough by now to recognize that it would just end up with Danny and Steve bickering right over her head, even if she literally wedged herself into the space between them, which is barely there to begin with.

So instead she just watches them. She talks to Chin, who is sitting on her other side and is very sweet about drawing her into conversations, and tries to enjoy her food. It’s just that it’s a little hard to concentrate on how good Steve’s fish is when she has to watch him throw an arm around Danny’s shoulders, and watch Danny grin up at Steve and lean into him and pat his back in return. 

*

**+1.**

When she finally gathers up the courage to do it, it’s a random Thursday night. She’s over at Danny’s place, which means something in and of itself – they’ve been together for going on four years, but they’ve never done more than have very vague, distant future talks about moving in. They’re on the couch, not quite cuddling because she’s been too stiff all evening. Danny hasn’t asked once if she’s feeling alright, so she has to wonder if he even noticed anything was off.

The movie they just watched has come to an end, and Danny is aimlessly channel surfing when he comes across a Friends rerun. “Oh man,” he says, “Steve loves this episode.”

That’s it. That’s what breaks her, and obliterates what’s left of her resolve to make the best of this relationship that could have been so good, if only it had been a little more like the way she so long deluded herself into thinking it was, and a little less like reality.

“I want to break up,” she blurts.

Danny, to her immense relief, turns off the TV. “What?” he asks, and the utter bewilderment in his voice is enough to tell her that yes, he really did fail to notice that she hasn’t been herself all evening.

She turns to him and looks him in the eye. It’s one of the scariest things she’s ever had to do. Intellectually, she knows that even if Danny gets angry about this, he would never lay a hand on her – he’s not that kind of guy. But that’s what she used to think about her ex-husband, too, before she had to flee the only city she’d ever known in fear of him. 

She thinks that maybe that’s part of why she stuck with Danny for as long as she did. Because he doesn’t hit her, and he makes her feel safe, and that felt valuable enough to ignore other glaring problems. She’s finally come to the conclusion that it’s not. It’s not enough. ‘Doesn’t land her in hospital’ isn’t a reason to date someone; it’s the very bare minimum of what to expect from any random person she meets. 

So she takes a deep breath and says the words she’s been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks. “It’s not working. You’re a really good guy, Danny, and I do love you, but I’m not your priority and I never have been. I need that.” Another breath, that ends up a little shaky. “I deserve that.”

Danny narrows his eyes. “Is this about my job? My kids?”

“No, it’s neither of those things.” She’s a little insulted he would think that, but she could have expected it. He has his own insecurities. “I knew what your job was when we started dating, and I would never want to get between you and your kids. It’s not them I feel like I’m losing a competition to that I never even agreed to be in.”

“Competition?” His hands, predictably, go flying through the air. She manages not to flinch, but he must see her twitch anyway, because he stills and crosses his arms over his chest instead, hands trapped in his armpits. “What are you even talking about?”

She looks at him for a long moment, and she thinks he probably knows the answer by the time she says it. There’s something in his eyes that’s guilty rather than shocked. “Steve,” she says anyway, just because he probably needs to hear it. “I’m talking about Steve.”

“Steve,” he repeats, like he can’t quite believe she would drag him into this. Like he hasn’t been bringing Steve into everything he’s ever done for the entire duration of their relationship, whether through inviting Steve to be physically present or just by mentioning him every six sentences. 

She thinks back to Friends. “He’s your Rachel, Danny. I can’t be your Julie. I don’t want you to say the wrong name at a wedding that doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon, anyway.”

Danny looks deeply conflicted. “You do realize there’s already a Rachel in my life, right?”

“Yes,” she says, and she’s aware this analogy is veering into ridiculous territory, but maybe she needs that, to offset the heartbreak of this moment. “But that Rachel isn’t your Rachel, Steve is. Rachel is your ex-wife who turned out to be a lesbian.”

Danny inclines his head and narrows his eyes at her again, a little. It’s considering rather than suspicious this time. “Should I be offended you’re so convinced that I’m Ross in all of this? Grace told me a while back that she thinks Ross is an asshole.”

It’s her turn to throw up her hands. It might be a move she picked up from him, even. The good part is that he definitely doesn’t flinch. “I’m dumping you, Danny, and you’re worried about which Friends character you’re being compared to.” 

“Right.” To his credit, he looks a little contrite. 

She sighs. “Just go be with your Rachel. Steve. Not the real life Rachel. Don’t get back together with Rachel, or I’ll personally come back and kick your ass.”

He huffs a laugh. It simultaneously breaks her heart further – she always loved when she managed to make him laugh – and is the start of her putting it back together, on her own.

*

About three months later, she runs into them at the beach. She spots them later than they spot her, but she’s the first to say anything.

“Hey.” She tries on a smile, and finds to her surprise that it works. It comes pretty easily.

Both Steve and Danny are in swimming trunks, surfboards under their arms. Steve’s hair is wet and Danny’s is a little haphazard, and there’s a red flush around his nose that he still gets when he’s out in the sun too much, even after all these years of getting his Jersey skin used to Hawaii. She never saw it much, because she always had to drag him to beaches under duress.

“Hey, uh, Melissa.” Danny twists his shoulder a bit to shake himself free of Steve’s hand, which was resting there. From the look currently on Danny’s face, she can’t entirely rule out the possibility that Steve was attempting to keep Danny from running away. Danny uses his own free hand to gesture expansively, like he’s including the entire beach in his awkwardness. “How, you know, how are you?”

“Good,” she says, and is again somewhat surprised to find that she means it, even though she had known this. It’s nice to know it’s still true while looking Danny in the face. “I’m really good, actually. What about you?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Grace and Charlie, too.”

Her eyes wander to Steve, who’s been a silent presence at Danny’s side so far. When he sees her looking, he gives her a grin, wide and honest, the kind she’d seen him direct at other people but never at her while she was dating Danny. “We’re really good,” Steve says. It should make him an asshole to be grinning at her like that after she left Danny partially because of him, and it does, a little bit, but mostly he looks so genuine about it that she can’t resent his happiness. This is what she and Danny never had.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she tells them. She hesitates briefly, but this might be the only chance she gets to ask about it in a while, and she doesn’t want to let it pass by. “I’ve been getting back into the dating game a bit, actually. How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Uh,” Danny says, and his eyes flick to Steve, who is already looking at him. 

It might be one of the best things that has happened to her since the breakup. It’s not that it’s magically not awkward, because it definitely is. It’s that Danny so clearly feels far more awkward about it than she does. If it makes her a little petty that she derives some satisfaction from that, then so be it.

“Well, Danno?” Steve asks, a little cocky. 

Danny does that exasperated but fond thing he does so well around Steve. “Yeah, actually,” he says, turning to grin carefully at Melissa. She grins back at him, out of a habit that she’ll probably never manage to break. “I’ve been dating, you know, my Rachel.”

Steve’s eyes widen comically. It’s a strange feeling, to be giggling uncontrollably at something her ex said, but Melissa thinks she likes it a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> This is where I'm warning you I'm going off on a tiny rant. Skip to the three stars if you'd rather avoid this negativity (which is very valid), but I kind of needed to put this _somewhere_.
> 
> One more point, a little darker than the fic: Melissa runs away from her abusive ex, an older man, and the guy she ends up with immediately after arriving in Hawaii is also (much!) older than she is and yells about every damn thing all the damn time. That’s not shade in Danny’s direction in any sort of way, but I am genuinely wondering if this was at all healthy or smart for Melissa, and none of that ever gets explored in canon because of the Girlfriend Black Hole. (And she also _kills_ her abusive ex with her car when he attacks her and Danny, and that’s just… forgotten as soon as it happened?) It’s… a little unsettling. I also realized, while writing this, that Danny has been dating Melissa for YEARS now and we’ve seen her in six separate episodes, but we have no clue what she even does for a living, as far as I remember or could find online. I just. I say this with love in my heart, but what the ever living fuck, H50 writers. 
> 
> There’s more still, but this fic was already twice as long as I intended, and I don’t mean to write an essay in the notes. Let’s just say I’m not super happy with how many of the women on this show are treated, but for Melissa it’s that times, like, ten. At least.
> 
> (Also relevant: a while after I started writing this, I hit the episode in s8 that has flashbacks to Danny saving a woman from her abusive ex in 1999 in Jersey. Danny starts a brief relationship with her, and uh, look, he didn’t know about Melissa’s past when he met Melissa and they started dating, but that he keeps being the guy that dates vulnerable women who are on the run from their abusive partners (or that the writers keep making him that guy, rather) does maybe say some things about Danny I don’t want to dig into too deeply because I’d rather ignore them completely.)
> 
> ***
> 
> Anyway!!! Thank you for indulging me, if you read any of this. I would love to hear what you thought of the fic. ❤️
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my H50 (mostly McDanno) blog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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